(Indulge me for a moment.  Any opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of WQED.)

Yesterday I wrote about orange water.  If you live in Pennsylvania you’ve seen creeks like this one.  If you haven’t, keep in mind this photo is not retouched.  The water is indeed bright orange.

Welcome to Blacklick Creek, the Stonycreek River, the upper reaches of Slippery Rock Creek and tributaries of the Conemaugh, the Casselman, the Youghiogheny and the Monongahela.

The list goes on and on.  Our water is damaged across the state.  It’s the legacy of coal.

During the coal rush Pennsylvania didn’t have strict mining laws and enforcement.  There were no rules about tailings and water and the coal companies never had to put up any money or pay a severance tax to clean up future problems.  They made a lot of money and coal was cheap because the long term cost was passed on to us.  A hundred years later we have water we can’t drink and creeks with no fish and none of the wildlife and birds that depend on them.

Pennsylvania has learned from this history, right?

Maybe.  Maybe not.

Our state is now in the midst of the Marcellus Shale gas rush that’s been going on a couple of years.  Before we knew this might hurt something, and before our laws could catch up, our water told the tale.

Marcellus Shale drilling is extremely water intensive, consuming 40 to 50 million gallons of water per well pad.  (Each well pad has 8 to 10 wells.)  The water is pumped from our creeks, rivers and lakes, lowering the water levels.  For example, a million gallons a day can be pulled from Cross Creek and Cross Creek Lake.

70% of the water is lost underground during high pressure hydraulic fracturing that mixes water, sand and over 200,000 gallons of toxic chemicals per well pad.  The rest returns to the surface extremely polluted, salty and more or less radioactive.

What happens then?  For those with water wells the drilling is a roll of the dice.  Many wells are OK but some become so dangerous you can’t even bathe in the water, let alone drink it.  People don’t find out until they get sick.

The rest of us are not exempt.  Right now there are no facilities that can remove the salts and radioactivity but municipal water treatment plants are allowed to accept the flowback water up to 1% of their output.  They dilute the flowback and we drink the results.

Tomorrow night on WQED you can learn more about Marcellus drilling’s effects on water when we rebroadcast “What’s in the Water? — An OnQ Special Series: Marcellus Shale Drilling,” hosted by Chris Moore.  Tune in on Wed, August 4 at 7:30pm or watch the segment online here.

Learn even more from the movie Gasland at a screening on Thursday, August 5 at 6:00pm, at Artists Image Resource (AIR), 518 Foreland Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15212.   Gasland is not on DVD yet but you can see the trailer online here and watch an interview with the movie maker, Josh Fox, on PBS Now.

It breaks my heart to see bad water.  My heart breaks even more when good water turns bad.

Thanks for listening.

(photo by Caitlin Mirra via Shutterstock)

p.s. There will be another screening of Gasland, Aug 27 at Frick Park.  For information see: http://www.marcellusprotest.org/aug27gasland

On one of my many Googling trips across the Internet I learned the scientific name of the red-footed booby and it made me laugh.

Sula sula?  All I could think of was the Yale fight song whose second verse begins, Boola, Boola.

Are there many North American birds with double scientific names?   I searched my field guide and found about 20 birds, most of which also live in Europe where scientific naming began.

The names are sometimes fascinating:

• Nycticorax nycticorax = Night raven, Night raven = Black-crowned night-heron
• Anhinga anhinga = a Tupi (Brazilian Indian) name meaning Devil Bird = Anhinga
• Histrionicus histrionicus = this bird is Theatrical, Theatrical = Harlequin duck
• Tyrannus tyrannus = This Tyrant, Tyrant is very aggressive toward predators = Eastern kingbird
• And, since first published in July 2010 this species has split!  A prehistoric cave dweller = Troglodytes trodlodytes = the Eurasian wren.  Our winter wren is now a different species without a double name: Troglodytes hiemalis.

And finally, Ajaja ajaja used to be my favorite scientific bird name, a fun word to say if you pronounce the J’s as H’s.  Alas, scientists renamed this bird to Platalea ajaja and took half the fun out of the Roseate spoonbill.

(photo of a Red-footed Booby by Deborah Acklin)

p.s. Here are two websites that describe the meanings of scientific bird names: Scientific bird names explained and Bird Names at Ornithology.com.

When I first heard about BP’s Gulf oil leak, I knew it was bad for birds.

Though initially far offshore, the oil immediately affected diving birds: gannets, terns and pelicans.

The first dead gannet broke my heart.  It could only get worse — and it has.

When the oil reached the marshes it hurt herons, egrets and shorebirds who died unreported because the marshes are inaccessible to cameras.  Even birds that were rescued, cleaned and released flew home to get oiled again because the leak keeps flowing.

Recently oil and death moved into camera range and now the public knows.  The spill is very, very bad.  Even if the leak stopped today the oil will linger for months to come.

What can we do?

As individuals we can’t stop this leak but we can help with the cleanup and support those who are helping birds.  There are many ways:

• Tri-State Bird Rescue and Research is leading the wildlife rescue effort.  They’re experts at treating oil-soaked birds and are called as first-responders to oil spill sites around the world.  Based in Newark, Delaware they’ve been in Louisiana since April, directly helping bird by bird.  Please support them here.
• The American Birding Association has set up a special fund to support bird rescue efforts.
• The National Audubon Society and the National Wildlife Federation are both mobilizing volunteers, urging their members to speak up for wildlife and collecting donations to help clean-up efforts.

Want to volunteer in the Gulf?  Check the websites above or click here to sign up at “deepwaterhorizonresponse.com” or here for the International Bird Rescue Research Center.

And finally, you can work to keep this from happening again by telling those in power, especially your Congressman and Senator who made the laws that allowed this to happen, that you’ve had enough.

We don’t have to live like this.

(Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class John Miller, released under the Creative Commons license with some rights reserved.  Click on the photo to see the original and a complete description.)

Another rainy Sunday afternoon and it’s making me stir crazy.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad it’s not icy but I wanted to hike in the woods today and cold rain isn’t any fun.

Is anyone else anxious for good weather?  It appears so.

Dianne Machesney sent me this picture from North Park near the Lone Pine ball field and wrote, “Some unknown person has been decorating two tree limb stubs for years now. They change with the seasons and often sport Steeler clothes.”

To me this character’s saying, “Rain is a hopeful sign of spring.”

True, I should try to enjoy the rain.  By the end of the week the lows will be 18 degrees.

(photo by Dianne Machesney)

Some time in the next two weeks the people of State College, Pennsylvania will wake to find dead birds dropping from the sky.

If all goes as planned there will be 15,000 dead starlings on rooftops, in gutters, on patios, in gardens, on parking lots, playsets and fields. 

No amount of advanced warning can prepare people for how appalling this will be but the U.S. Department of Agriculture is trying anyway.  Last week the Centre Daily Times and WJAC-TV announced that USDA has permission to poison the large flock of European starlings near University Park airport because they might pose an aviation hazard. 

Really?  Well, they caused a plane to return to the airport three years ago.  That incident did not result in a mass poisoning but last year’s crash-landing on the Hudson River has the FAA focused on bird strikes.  For them, poison is appealing because it looks like the problem is solved when thousands of birds die.  Unfortunately it’s not an effective long term solution compared to non-lethal methods.

But aren’t there laws protecting birds?  Yes, but not always.  European starlings are not protected because they are non-native and listed as a nuisance species.  USDA is even allowed to poison protected species if farmers claim the birds are damaging their crops.  

So will the poison be dangerous to people and pets?  It depends on who you ask.  USDA uses DRC-1339 which they say only kills starlings (or blackbirds or crows or whatever bird they happen to be targeting) but if that were the case how do you explain these warnings on the label and these rules for handling it?

• Those who mix it with bait must wear respirators if they are dealing with a pound or more of it.
• Bait must be carefully placed and removed to insure non-target species are not exposed.
• Treated baits cannot be placed within 50 feet of water.  
• It is prohibited to graze animals or grow crops on treated areas for 365 days.

The USDA will be as careful as possible, but the fact is that they’ll be putting DRC-1339 into thousands of portable poison containers (birds) who will fly around the surrounding area for a short time and deposit it by dying in unknown and unpredictable places.  It is impossible to fully control the process. 

Whenever they conduct one of these operations people are appalled and outraged and when they make their outrage known USDA is not asked back again for a very long time.  State College is about to go through this.  Stay tuned for the results. 

OK, I’ll climb down from my soapbox now.  Just don’t say you haven’t been warned.

(image from Wikipedia, in the public domain, color altered)

The sky was clear, the full moon bright.  Last night my backyard was flooded with light as bright as day.

The trees and even the twigs cast shadows.  If I was a mouse there would be no hiding from an owl in that silvery light.

Above the Arctic Circle the sun set on September 21 inaugurating six months of perpetual darkness – or so I thought until the moon reminded me that once a month everything is revealed.

I imagine last night on Banks Island.  The sea ice glints in the moonlight.  An arctic fox crouches to pounce on a lemming.  A raven scans the ice for seal guts, remains of a polar bear’s meal.  Night is turned to day.

The Snow Moon will wane.  In two weeks time only stars will illuminate the scene.  The night will be dim until the next full moon – a Blue Moon – on December 31.

(photo by Chuck Tague.  See Chuck’s moon-watch in Florida and his Full Moon Schedule for 2010.)